Stage 2 — Company Selection Memo

Weight: 10% Deliverable: 400–600 word memo in docs/decisions/

Choose the company you'll live with all semester and defend the choice the way a senior analyst writes to a managing director: concise, decision-oriented, evidence-tight.

⚠ Do this first — it's worth real points

Add adamwstauffer as a Write collaborator on your repo: Settings → Collaborators → Add people → choose Write. Without it the instructor can't leave tracked PR feedback, and a −5 point penalty applies to this stage and every one after it until fixed. Sixty seconds, do it now.

What you'll learn

How to frame an analytical project's scope before touching data
What makes a hypothesis falsifiable — and why "we'll see what the ratios show" earns nothing
How professional review works: PR-based feedback, the same loop as a manager marking up a draft memo

Picking a company that won't fight you

Eligibility rules exist to keep the analysis clean:

Publicly traded on a recognized exchange — HOSE, HNX, SGX, SET, IDX, Bursa, PSE, NYSE, NASDAQ all qualify. Vietnamese and ASEAN listings are encouraged.
Audited annual report available with enough line-item detail to populate the template.
Non-financial company. Banks, insurers, and REITs have structurally different balance sheets — inventory turnover means nothing to a bank.
At least 2 years of comparable data — remember the startYear_* ranges need the prior year.

Pro move

Before committing, actually open the annual report and check you can find: total revenue, COGS, interest expense, inventory, receivables, total debt, and shareholders' equity — for both years. If any are missing or buried, pick a different company now, not at Stage 3.

The six required sections

#	Section	What "strong" looks like
1	Company Overview	Name, ticker, exchange, industry, market cap, reporting currency — in three sentences
2	Selection Rationale	Why this company is analytically interesting: recent M&A, capital-structure shift, industry disruption, relevance to your career
3	Data Availability & Sources	Named sources ("HOSE disclosure portal", "company IR page"), fiscal year end, reporting standard (VAS / IFRS / U.S. GAAP)
4	Preliminary Observations	2–3 hypotheses in "I expect X because Y" form — directional and falsifiable
5	Ratio Categories Preview	Which categories matter most for this industry and why
6	Data Collection Plan	Statements needed, market assumptions to source, currency/standard considerations

Anatomy of a hypothesis

✗ "We will see what the leverage ratios show."         ← not falsifiable
✓ "I expect leverage ratios to rise from FY2024 to
   FY2025 because the company financed its regional
   expansion with USD-denominated debt issued in
   early 2025."                                        ← direction + reason

A good hypothesis can be wrong. That's the point — at Stage 5 you'll check each one against the computed ratios, and a cleanly falsified hypothesis makes a better final analysis than a vague one that can't lose.

Using an LLM — drafter, not decider

The memo template is deliberately structured so an LLM can fill it in if you supply the judgment. The division of labor:

LLM does well	You must do
Filling all six sections in on-template structure	Choose the company — that's your judgment
Suggesting "I expect X because Y" hypotheses	Verify eligibility (listed, non-financial, 2+ years of data)
Identifying likely data sources	Confirm those sources actually have the data
Senior-analyst tone	Edit for accuracy — the LLM doesn't know your company like you should

Log any prompt beyond a two-line nudge in deliverables/prompt-log.md — the log is graded at Stage 4, and starting the habit now is free practice.

Submission checklist

adamwstauffer added as Write collaborator (−5/stage until done)
Memo at docs/decisions/YYYY-MM-DD-{lastname}-{company-slug}-selection.md — all lowercase
YAML frontmatter from the template kept intact
All six required sections present
Hypotheses written in "I expect X because Y" form
Verified the annual report actually contains the needed line items, both years
AI sessions logged in deliverables/prompt-log.md

Rubric

Criterion	%
Company selection & rationale	25%
Analytical framing & hypotheses (falsifiable, directional)	25%
Data source identification	25%
Professionalism & communication	25%

Plus: Stage 5 grades how you incorporated the instructor's PR feedback on this memo. Expect comments; plan to respond visibly — accept, modify, or push back with reasons. Silence reads as oversight, not judgment.